The 12 Best Games On Xbox 360

You have an Xbox 360 controller waiting for you in your living room and a console hungry to entertain you. Your move.

Sure, you can use it to watch Netflix or download a movie, but you bought this thing to play games. Which ones should you get? The dozen titles below will provide you with all sorts of great experiences. Remember: Pace yourself.

After years of changes both minor and major, the Assassin's Creed series had begun to feel in a rut. (For example: We'd had Assassin's Creed II on this list since its inception.) Finally this year, with the pirate-themed Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, the series has taken a major and unequivocal step forward. It doesn't lose all of the series' bad habits -- hello follow missions -- but it improves many longstanding problems with better stealth, easier-to-navigate cities, and sidequests that actually feel like they help make your character more powerful. Best of all, it adds naval combat and a vast Caribbean overworld that make the game feel like, in the words of Luke Plunkett, "Wind Waker for grown-ups."

A Good Match For: Pirate fans, history buffs, anyone who's ever wanted to pull up alongside a British frigate, grab a rope and swing from one deck to the other before fighting your way up the deck to take on the captain. So basically, anyone who's ever wanted to be a pirate.

Not a Good Match For: Those who demand precision controls. The on-foot controls in Black Flag are probably the best of the series, but they're still a far cry from where a third-person stealth/platformer should be. It's time for a crouch button, Ubisoft.

With an even bigger, wackier, lootier Borderlands, Gearbox has proved that their hybrid RPG/shooter franchise isn't just a one-hit wonder. Three years after the first release, Gearbox put out a Borderlands 2 that doesn't just have thousands more guns. It's more complex. It's even got heart. And yet Borderlands 2 still manages to strike a balance between being more soulful while retaining the slapstick, make-no-excuses-for-itself humour for which the series is known. The characters you meet are often borderline (if not full-blown) psychotic, but in the most endearing of ways. Enemies are just as raunchy as they are diverse. It's colourful, it's tough, it's meaty, and it's a joy to play with up to 3 friends in co-op. It's also got TONS of extra, downloadable content to keep you busy once you finish the main game.

A Good Match For: Gamers who want a fun co-op experience to play through with friends. There are plenty of quests, plenty of guns, and plenty of laughs to be had.

Not A Good Match For: People who want to burn through a game easily. Borderlands 2 can be pretty tough, especially without backup. And if you aren't willing to spend some time churning out sidequests, you just might catch yourself at the tail-end of the game without the chops or stats to finish without getting burnt out.

Automotive destruction's never looked as sexy as it does in Criterion's hi-speed racing game Burnout: Paradise. You're tasked with driving against traffic, scraping against civilian cars and shoving competitors into signature crashes called Takedowns. But, Paradise also deserves praise for a seamless integration of multiplayer where dropping into a showdown can be quick as tapping a button.

A Good Match For: Street racing fans. If you've ever pulled up to a stoplight and imagined what it'd be like to burn rubber on a wide-open stretch of asphalt -- and survive any ensuing mishaps -- this is your game.

Not a Good Match For: To tune the specs of their rides. It may be Paradise but these aren't real-world cars. You can't do much more than swap out paint jobs, so those wanting to make changes to brakes, shock or engines will need to get their grease-monkey fix elsewhere.

Grand Theft Auto V is an impressive crime game. Not perfect, but impressive. The game gives players one of the richest, most beautiful open worlds we've ever been able to play in. In this case, the landscape is a fictionalized version of Los Angeles and the California desert. Go anywhere in this vast game. Grab a car, plane, truck, bicycle, boat or tank. Head off in any direction. You're bound to see extraordinary sights and stumble into some sort of good and probably violent time. The game looks amazing even on the old Xbox 360 hardware. It also plays better than any GTA before it. GTA V's innovative, swappable three-protagonist system creates the feel of a true ensemble adventure, though crazy man Trevor steals the show.

A Good Match For: Players who like to go into a game to break the rules. GTA is still at its best when it's a playground for virtual misbehavior.

Not a Good Match For: Anyone who can't stomach the game's mockery of, well, pretty much everyone.

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons came out of nowhere this year, surprising everyone with its strange control scheme, smart (if simple) puzzles and devastating ending. Can game mechanics be emotionally affecting? Turns out yup, they can be. It's a nice, short game with almost no fat -- and despite the fact that the two main characters don't communicate in a language anyone could understand, they still manage to communicate a great deal of context and backstory. You'll never think of your thumbs and your controller triggers the same way.

A Good Match For: People looking for something different, those who like weird controls schemes, fans of old-school fairy tales.

Not a Good Match For: Those hoping for a long game -- it's a few hours long and offers no real replayability -- people who like their characters to speak actual languages.

Bethesda Softworks' hit role-playing game does nothing so much as deliver a giant, Tolkien-styled possibility space to its players. The high-altitude climes of Tamriel feel alive with wonder and threat. The ability to customise your warrior outcast with a singular mix of mystical skills and melee mastery feels as broad as Skyrim's horizon.

A Good Match For: Dungeon & Dragon players. Adventuring in Skyrim feels like spinning your own epic yarn, as songs of your feats spread digitally from town to town in a gameworld that reacts to your actions. You can spend weeks meandering in its fascinating sidequests, leaving the main story.

Not a Good Match For: Those who play with urgency. The drive to wander and discover overpowers the drive to complete in Skyrim. If you're the kind of player who wants those two vectors to meet in a meaningful way, you'll find The Elder Scrolls V a bit frustrating.

Gears 3 fills the marquee spot held by Bungie's Halo games and with good reason. Epic Games' scifi shooter threequel represents hardcore shooter nirvana: a tightly-polished campaign that plays great solo or coop and some of the best multiplayer found anywhere. Moreover, the game's been robustly supported with both campaign and multiplayer DLC designed to deepen an already hearty release, particularly with the addition of many of the best maps from Gears of War 2.

A Good Match For: Dedicated online shooter fanatics who play every day. The more you play, the more Gears 3 rewards you.

Not a Good Match For: Those who want deep character development or intriguing story structure. Gears games have always been meat-and-potatoes in terms of plot

Bungie created the best goodbye possible with a "final" Halo title that both looks forward and backward in the blockbuster FPS franchise's history. Pairing up a health system similar to that of the first Halo game with all-new abilities like jetpacks and holographic decoys makes the decade-old series feel simultaneously familiar and fresh.

A Good Match For: Sci-fi fans. To play a Halo game is to be introduced to an expansive fictional universe. Reach places you inside one of the Halo-verse's pivotal battles and imbues its lead characters and environments with more personality than in previous games.

Not a Good Match For: Anyone who wants Master Chief. The Spartan you control in Halo: Reach isn't as invulnerable or powerful as the Xbox mascot and the feel of certain weapons gets tweaked when compared to previous games.

Mass Effect 2 was the one that made you believe. Its predecessor drew players in with expansive world-building and a tense storyline, but it was also a clunky, rough-hewn slab of a game. BioWare's 2010 follow-up polished the combat, introduced characters who'd become fan favourites and streamlined the overall experience to a fine focus. The first game made you want to experience all the sci-fi action and drama, but the second game made it a lot easier to do so. Pack in a huge number of varied and often terrific downloadable content packs and you've got one beefy, galaxy-spanning chunk of video game to play.

A Good Match For: Fans of the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Like George Lucas' signature creation, Mass Effect's fictional cosmos has multitudes of tales to tell. The extremely good post-campaign DLC chapters expose players to side stories centered on both new and familiar characters, just like Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy and the other Star Wars extensions. Overlord, Lair of the Shadow Broker and the other add-ons really made it feel like millions of little lives were at stake in Shepard's fight against the Reapers.

Not a Good Match For: People who need closure. Mass Effect 2 tells plenty of small stories, but the main narrative arc is still essentially a set-up for the 2012 follow-up.

Red Dead Redemption, the most assured work by the makers of the Grand Theft Auto games finds its success by shedding the trappings of the modern-day world and giving players a vast virtual Southwest to roam in search of revenge. When your lonely ambles suddenly get shattered by an ambush or the plea to stop an unjust hanging, it's a bittersweet adrenaline rush unlike anything else in modern video games. Silence, then gunfire, then more fleeting silence again.

A Good Match For: Admirers of killer endings. The denouement for the turn-of-the-century saga stands as an emotionally powerful finish that can stand amongst the cowboy cinema that inspired it.

Not a Good Match For: Fans of brevity. Redemption's plot takes a long amount of playtime to resolve and you'll often feel like you're doing busy work in the nooks and crannies of its spaghetti Western gameworld.

Call it the Superman 2 or Empire Strikes Back of video games. Valve's follow-up to a classic improves on the humour, characterization and puzzle-solving of its predecessor to deliver a tight, focused experience full of poignancy and humour.

A Good Match for: Comedy lovers. The voicework alone -- performed in stellar fashion by Stephen Merchant and Ellen McLain -- will make you laugh out loud but the brain-teasing puzzles and embedded gags keep the chuckles coming even when everything else in the game goes quiet.

Not a Good Match For: Mediocrity fans. People who argue with Portal 2's greatness are like folks complaining that diamonds came from dirt. Their argument is invalid.

There it is: proof that a multiplatform game released in 2012 can recapture the glories of a 1994 PC classic. The re-imagined XCOM delivers graphical upgrades and interface refinements like you might expect but what really makes it sing is the added attachment that you feel to the battles and the soldiers who fight them. If you're considering picking up the game now, get Enemy Within instead, as it contains the original game as well as the terrific 2013 expansion. It's sold as a standalone for consoles, so be sure to buy the new version.

A Good Match For: Efficiency lovers. This version of human-vs-aliens warfare streamlines gameplay when compared to its predecessor. And the importance of cover in combat and clever deployment of perks makes you consider every decision intensely.

Not a Good Match For: Those who want skirmishes. The combat in 2012 XCOM can stretch on way longer than is necessary. Because the battles require active engagement, you can feel chained to a session.

Update 9/12/13: With a new year comes an updated bests design and with it, the chance to go back and do a one-time overhaul of each list. After much arguing and debating, many changes have been made. Gone are Batman: Arkham City, BioShock, Dishonored, Super Street Fighter IV, NBA 2K12 and Assassin's Creed II. Taking their place are: Borderlands 2, Portal 2, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, Mass Effect 2 and Grand Theft Auto V.

Update 13/11/12: As promised, we're swapping out older good games from new good games. Goodbye, Lego Star Wars III and Toy Soldiers: Cold War; hello, XCOM and Dishonored.

Note: 28/12/12: We're bumping up this list of Xbox 360 Bests for those folks who may have just gotten an Xbox 360 during this holiday season. Some great games have come out for the system since the last update -- like Far Cry 3, Halo 4 and Call of Duty: Black Ops II. Kotaku's editorial team considered these games but couldn't reach a consensus as to whether they deserve a spot just yet. We're keeping our eyes and minds open as new releases keep hitting Microsoft's platform.

Want more of the best games on each system? Check out our complete directory:

I still remember the time I took SFIV out my machine put it back into it's case, walked out of my apartment into the garbage room, opened the chute and listened as it dropped 28 floors into the awaiting bin.

That was entirely optional. The problem was the aggressively bad players giving terrible feedback for what gametypes they wanted, speaking for "everybody" and we ended up missing on great gametypes due to Halo 2 fanboys demanding the game be changed to that game. Besides, the "Quake approach" doesn't work when a lot of very loud people have been trying to smash Halo into a one-gun game only ever and forever.

I've enjoyed Reach the most out of any Halo game, the campaign was great, especially because it was lacking Master Chief. The multiplayer felt a lot better, the ability and loadout stuff was alright but ultimately didn't matter too much. Forge and Forge World were amazing, and the Invasion gamemode was a neat addition.

The point is, the default slayer mode didn't take the "Quake approach", and that was pretty much the reason why I played Halo over games like Call of Duty and Battlefield. I preferred it that way, and that's why Halo 3 tops Reach for me, personally.

That's pretty much how I feel - As a multiplatform gamer, you can really only judge a console by it's exclusives, especially if you prefer to game on PC. Which is incidentally why I rate the Wii quite highly compared to most people - it's exclusives were great even if it utterly failed in anything multiplatform. Putting multiplatform games on a "top 10 games for this platform" list feels like it's just complementing the games themselves, not the system they're on.

The PS3 did have some amazing exclusives this generation, and not just AAA but some great indie gems as well (Journey alone is worth buying a PS3 in my book). Having said that, I love the Halo games, every single one of them. I hope Xbox One can bring the exclusives this time.

Yeah that's a good point. I bought Red Dead Redemption on the 360 because I heard it was better than the PS3 version, and the stuff up that is PS3 Skyrim is pretty egregious. But for the vast majority of cases the multiplatform games perform the same don't they?

Also, I'm also coming at it from the perspective of somebody who considers the PC their primary gaming platform, and in every case I can think of the PC version of a multiplatform title is superior in all the ways that matter to me (graphics and performance)... Which makes the absence of RDR on PC all the more painful.

It does kinda make this list a bit pointless when the majority of games are multi-platform. If there's going to be a list for the best whatever-console games, then at least choose exclusives while also having a separate list for multi-platform releases.
Although I have heard Skyrim is better on the 360 than it is on the PS3, what with all the f'ing bugs (or is it just my copy that keeps freezing?). If that's true, then I guess it makes sense having it on a 360 list.

The PC is always my system of choice - which is why the Xbox360 to me wasn't as awesome to me as others. Most of my friends who don't play games on their PC LOVE the X360, and I'm sure I would too. I'm sensible though and have a PC :D

It's slim pickings really. Lost Odyssey, Crackdown, DoA4 and DoAX2, Some Halo and Gears games, 99 Nights, Infinite Undiscovery, The Idolmaster, maybe a few others and that's stretching the definition of 'good' fairly far as it is.